BOB CARR on Diplomacy, Statesmanship and Grief

Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

Josh Szeps

Comedy Interviews, Self-improvement, Society & Culture, Education, Comedy

4.6 • 863 Ratings

🗓️ 31 March 2025

⏱️ 101 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Even if you're not Australian, you want to listen to this conversation with one of the nation's most iconic statesmen.

Bob Carr is a former foreign minister of Australia (i.e. the secretary of state) and, before that, the longest-continuously-serving Premier of NSW, Australia's most populous state. He's an intellectual powerhouse, an icolonoclast, a champion debater, a student of American history, of geopolitics and of diplomacy.

For the first portion of this conversation, he and Josh discuss Australian issues - nuclear submarines, his tenure as state leader. But the second half is a delightful rumination on power, Trump, the liberal world order, China, success, legacy, and grief.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Gahey, humans. Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas. And wow, we cover a lot in this chat,
0:09.0	even if you are not Australian. Trust me, you want to listen to this conversation with Bob Carr,
0:15.5	one of the sort of greatest elder statesman of Australian political life. He is an iconoclast. He's a champion debater.
0:24.4	He's a student of American history, of geopolitics, of diplomacy. He also happens to be the longest
0:30.5	continuously serving premier of the most populous state in New South Wales. That means that he was
0:35.7	effectively what Americans would call the governor of New South Wales. That means that he was effectively what Americans would call the
0:37.5	governor of New South Wales from 1995 to 2005. He stepped down voluntarily. His reign presided over the
0:47.0	Sydney Olympic Games and really a big resurgence in the life of Sydney as kind of a
0:53.2	transitioning, I suppose, from a bit of a regional backwater
0:56.3	to being the global city that it is today. He then went on after his premiership of New South Wales
1:03.0	to become the foreign minister of Australia under two prime ministers, Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd.
1:10.3	But he's so much more than that. He's a deep
1:12.8	thinker about liberal democracy, about how to structure the global order about China, about
1:18.8	Trump, about the United States. For the first portion of this conversation, we do talk about
1:24.5	his premiership and about New South Wales and about things that might be of more interest to local listeners.
1:29.6	If you're not interested in that, don't give up.
1:32.3	Skip through 20 minutes, 30 minutes or something like that because the final hour is a really interesting reflection about what it means to lead a successful life, what it means to be a statesman and a diplomat, and what it means indeed to be a widower
1:45.4	as someone who lost his life partner not all that long ago.
1:50.2	Please enjoy as much as I did a total delight, the one and only Bob Carr.
1:57.1	I mean, it is amazing how much the media landscape has changed over the past few years in terms of the, in terms of where people are getting their information from and how young people are consuming information.
2:06.8	And there's like perils as well as opportunities, obviously, in anyone being able to have an audience the size of Joe Rogan's, I guess.
2:14.5	What was it like when you were initially, like when you first became premier,
	...

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